CARBONDALE, Ill. ââ?¬â?? A lightning strike killed a high school
runner as he left a pole vault pit shortly before a track meet Thursday, the
county coroner said.
“It came out of nowhere,” said Scott Hankey, Carbondale
Community High School’s baseball coach, whose team was preparing
for a game nearby. “There was a very, very light rain. There
wasn’t anything in the way of dark clouds. It didn’t look anything
like a thunderstorm.”
“It sounded like a sonic boom,” Nick Evans, a member of the 1,600-meter
relay team with Williams, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Corey Williams, 18, was returning to the main track area from
the pole vault pit about 4 p.m. when the lightning bolt hit him.
Coaches and others tried to revive him, but he was declared dead by
the time he reached a hospital.
Thomas Kupferer, Jackson County’s coroner, confirmed that
lightning killed the teenager.
More than 200 people attended a candlelight vigil for Williams
on Thursday night, and classes at the school were canceled Friday
to give the students time to grieve.
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